This project has bought together five European schools from France, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania. Our mix of partner schools reflects the diversity within the European Union. This partnership includes public schools from small rural communities to big cities.

Students will discover, study and share information about food and traditions in all of our partner countries. They will use conventional and new technologies to compare folk motives, dances and songs over two years, produce a multilingual dictionary of cookery terms, learn to cook new traditional food recipes from the partner countries and dance and sing folk dances and short songs from the partner countries, make a calendar of international festivals, a picture cookery book of traditional recipes, and finally produce a video meant to teach a few basic steps in folk dances from all partner countries.

Regular meetings of teachers will ensure appropriate planning and evaluation at every stage. These will also enable a thorough understanding of European educational systems.

Our project will not only benefit each school but also their associated local communities. As our pupils gain a greater understanding of food production and preparation, of the importance of preserving and respecting national, and European values and traditions, the knowledge of these young Europeans will directly filter upwards through family, local and international communities creating a healthier, more tolerant and open-minded generation of Europeans.

In such a globalizing world we need to know, respect and preserve both our own traditions and other cultural motives in the EU. These make us learn to respect each other by learning similarities and accepting our differences. Thus we will feel more comfortable, more tolerant, and secure. Exchanging traditions, life styles and ideas about different educational systems will empower students and teachers to use their communication skills more efficiently and students will have a chance to practice what they have learned. They will understand the importance of learning foreign languages (English as the main language of the project, but also less studied languages of the partner countries, such as Romanian, Italian, French, Portuguese, Polish). We'll also learn some mostly used greetings and useful expressions in each partner's language.

The need for this project came from our observation that teenagers nowadays tend to overlook, if not sometimes look down on their own traditions, on one hand, and on the other, to be quite intolerant with cultures they are not familiar with, so they do not understand completely. While working on this project, that is writing the traditional cooking recipes, learning about folk costumes, songs and dances, students as well as teachers will get to know their importance to each culture as well as their influence/presence in nowadays fashion, music, dances and even if our modern world changes rapidly, it will always come back to its traditional values.

Objectives of the project

The theme of our project will address the following Comenius objectives:

to develop knowledge and understanding among young people and educational staff of the diversity of European cultures and languages and its value.

to help young people acquire the basic life styles and competencies necessary for their personal development

The concrete objectives of our project are:

to encourage students to be aware of and value cultural and linguistic diversity in Europe.

to promote students personal and professional development in order to become open minded, tolerant and active European citizens.

to encourage foreign language learning and sharing through the use of technologies.

to enhance the pedagogy of all participating schools, share knowledge and exchange didactic experiences between teachers.

Approaches to achieve our objectives:

traditional costumes, habits, songs, dances and cooking recipes will be highlighted in our project, thus the participating partners being directly involved in learning and sharing their own culture and language as well as the ones of the other countries in the project.

students and teachers will have direct contact and communicate with pupils and teachers in 7 other countries. They will work together to produce the mini dictionary, cookery booklets and learn different folk dances and songs. The fortunate and interesting part of our project is that we have involved 8 countries coming from such different parts of Europe, having different languages lifestyles, culture and even religion, which turns out to be an immense advantage and possibility to prove the "beauty" of diversity and learning "the lesson of tolerance and acceptance". This will also encourage community groups to become involved in the project. Our cultural calender will display the richness of traditions within the European Union.

Our cookery and greetings dictionary with associated CDs of traditional songs will encourage our students to communicate in other partners countries' languages. Using new technologies in learning simple greetings and cookery terms and phrases will motivate every one to communicate.

during mobilities, planned observations in each school will be time tabled. On their return from the mobility all teachers will complete a report about the school and its pedagogy to share with colleagues in staff meetings. Discussions will be held on their implications for each school.